Syria’s Left: from death to resurrection!

As Syria’s old communist factions announce “death”, “rebirth”, and even “resurrection”, they should first confront their own fractured legacy.  The first communist party in Syria was founded in 1924 under the name Hizb al-Shaab (the People’s Party). A year later it re-emerged as the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon, and in 1928 became known as the Communist Party of Syria – Comintern Branch after being accepted into the Communist International. From the moment he joined this party, one man would dominate its history for nearly six decades: Khalid Bakkdash. Born in Damascus in 1912 to a Kurdish family, he trained in law, broke with the bourgeois National Bloc in 1930 and rose to the party secretariat within three years. Bakkdash travelled to Moscow for the 1935 wo…